Archive for November, 2011|Monthly archive page

Yesterday’s Republican debate covered foreign policy and national security. Obama’s success overseas* has made it hard for Republicans to gain points by directly attacking his record, and most candidates last night chose wisely instead to differentiate themselves from each other. (Indeed the eventual Republican nominee will need to focus more on the President’s domestic record, namely the economy and job creation, to emerge victorious.)

Full of empty promises that glossed over the complexities of governing the world, the occasion did offer a taste of what kind of world the candidates would usher in.

Here is the video clip of my interview with a Ugandan Muslim spokesman following Gaddafi’s death. Those of you more interested in the subject of faith as it pertains to the former Libyan leader’s life (and death) may skip forward to about the 9:27 mark. ~ IG

Around the turn of the millennium, fresh out of j-school and a little pompous and naive you might say, I predicted that the best chance the world could hope for to close the competitive gap with the US is if humanity entered a future that valued technology less. The likelihood of that seemed real because wouldn’t there inevitably be a limit to the utility and satisfaction derived from technology? Wouldn’t, for instance, the speed of computing reach a point whereby any improvement would be indiscernible and thus undesirable? By extension wouldn’t technology’s gift of easier and cheaper in ever greater quantity reach a tipping point to make life feel complicated and expensive? Wouldn’t this lead more than just Luddites to revolt? Read the rest of this entry »

In Africa, I’ve been out of the loop on this Occupiers and their 99 percent thing, and so a couple days after returning to the States this week I was delighted to turn a corner in downtown LA and come face-to-face with them – lots of baggie-jeaned, hoodied youth sitting on the trampled grass beneath the towering Mausoleum-of-Mausolus-inspired phallus of City Hall, a raspy-throated woman complementing a passer-by on his “rad” shirt, a super-tan, whispy-haired elder handing out leaflets on GMOs, a bearded dude in a beret stroking a cat and, for sure, the sweet pungency of kind bud keeping it all real.

WASHINGTON – Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal, page A5, news brief: Four Georgia men accused of trying to manufacture a deadly toxin and attack government officials charged. Wednesday’s New York Times, the story was nowhere in the A section and relegated to A18 on Thursday. The Washington Post gave the story the whole of A2 Thursday, but with a new snow policy for federal workers beating it to page 1. From CNN.com to Fox News, it has already fallen off the radar at the time of writing. My mother, who reads a newspaper a day and gets more news in the car to work and on PBS in the evening, said she hadn’t heard of the four men from Georgia.

Gatsiounis is an East Africa-based author and journalist known for his frank and revealing analysis of pressing global issues. Prior to his arrival on the Continent last year, his trenchant and often prescient commentaries, penned in a climate of restriction and intimidation for publications across the political spectrum, including Newsweek, ... Continue reading →